Ballad of the Wolf Rider
by shelter
Summary: A simple but maybe a bit long poem written as a prelude to the story, centering on San and the beginnings of the conflict. I tried to make it as authentic as possible, but you be the judge..


**Ballad of the Wolf-Rider**

My small contribution to a good piece of anime by Hayao Miyazaki & his Studio. The form doesn't follow the original form of the old ballad, but more of the freestyle of modern poetry, especially Dylan Thomas, which I was reading before I wrote this down. It's bloody long because I get carried away. Appreciate any reviews…(grins)…

_From rain in the hills fleeced in cloud,  
to forest crawling in the valley below;  
from the shroud swimming over ancient towns  
littered on the stubborn slopes;_

the sprinting of mountain streams, pacing  
the lunge of every bitten cliff;  
to the vales of ash and aspen, calling  
with each cough of the wind:

the men that sweep the plains, axes like brooms,  
dustpans over timber, iron, gold, meat -  
till the plains are cleaned, the mortal wounds  
over woods like scars and graffiti.

The mother of nature shrieks in woe:  
streams run umbilical with her blood -  
the miscarriage of creation – no other foes,  
but the rebellion of her sons,

the fog where spirit mourns spirit, fires  
and funerals with wreaths laid in hate;  
the lament echoes from distant shires,  
as men stoke malice in molten flames.

Yet such men flee from the shadows  
when the gods of nature are loosed,  
seeking recompensation, and the hunters  
surrender a child at the jaws of the wolf.

But the price of blood is not paid in death:  
the wolf-god's hand is stayed,  
a child lives on a beast's breath  
till revenge's debt is paid –

for mercy bears its solitary fruit:  
the human-child of the wolf-god!  
Denied to the roots of her blood;  
withered from all promise of truce.

A thousand moons would pass since,  
and the kodama would humbly note  
the Night-Walker's goings-out and in,  
while clouds would blow the rains from their throats,

and in shame lay the lords of the beasts:  
disgraced by man and the demon's hand,  
over a forest left to bleed,  
carcass of a human hinterland.

Rise, rise the reign of a great warrior!  
The leader of creatures of hooves –  
vengeance falls in the swipe of her spear –  
judgment rides on the back of a wolf!

For she has no fear of sword or axe;  
and wears the mask of a ghost's stealth,  
passing over the towns, and on her back  
rides the angel of death.

For her foes are men whose pride breaks  
mountains; their greed a curse  
cast in iron – the smoke of their dwelling place –  
like the spoils from a furnace.

She does battle as a dance without steps  
blind as her humanity slips and falls  
from the holds of traps  
laid treeless within stone walls

her brothers are powerless to save,  
from the eye of her human enemy:  
the mistress with the wooden stake  
which breathes iron that brings gods to their knees.

Wrath is the thread of her foe's shawl;  
man and forest torn in war,  
and the stumps of trees unstitched, spoiled  
as the souls of men unaccounted for.

For the wolf-princess and mistress of the stone heart  
press the trigger of a private feud:  
no word can bid their hate thence depart,  
or their madness remove,

till the coming of a prince seeking peace  
and a cure of his accursed self  
he cannot control. Friend of man and beasts,  
the arch of his bow and the trot of his elk.

But until the day the Forest Spirit heals man,  
she remains princess of wolves and blades,  
protector of the forest lands,  
guerilla with the devil's face,

stalking the ledges mounted high in mist  
and the mountains embracing the sky,  
whose valleys are the darkest sewers of grief  
and pain as the forest drains of life.

Partaker of the sadness, she and her brothers  
are the shadows of a lost cause –  
no heart for her kind or any other –  
fading from the day which all life draws.

And as the gates of the moon open,  
the Night-Walker treads over his realms of pain,  
while the howls of wolves utter unbroken:  
the princess rides out on a wolf's mane!

Human in heart, soul and face,  
but warrior and rider by name. (22.11)


End file.
